PNNL

Abstract

Current fieldable spectroscopy techniques often use single detector systems heavily impacted by in- terferences from intense background radiation fields. These effects result in low-confidence measurements that can lead to misinterpretation of the collected spectrum. To help improve interpretation of the fission products and short-lived radionuclides produced in a composite sample, a coincidence-? database is being developed in support of a robust portable ? and X-ray coincidence detector system concurrently under development at the Pa- cific Northwest National Laboratory for in-field deployment. Hitherto, no database exists containing coincident ? - ? and ? - X-ray branching-ratio intensities on an absolute scale that will greatly enhance isotopic identifica- tion for in-field applications. As part of this project, software has been developed to parse all radioactive-decay data sets from the Evaluated Nuclear Structure Data File (ENSDF) archive to enable translation into a more use- ful JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) formats that more readily supports query-based data manipulation. The coincident database described in this work is the first of its kind and contains coincidence ? - ? and ? - X-ray intensities and their corresponding uncertainties, together with auxiliary metadata associated with each decay data set. The new JSON format provides a convenient and portable means of data storage that can be imported into analysis frameworks with relatively low overhead allowing for meaningful comparison with measured data.